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Relentless Ontario C&I sector gets biggest BTM storage system so far

Convergent Energy & Power, a US-Canadian developer backed with investment from Statoil, has just connected up Ontario’s largest single-site behind-the-meter energy storage system to date.

Industrial customers of electric utilities in the Canadian province are charged a higher rate for electricity use at peak times than their residential counterparts, under Ontario’s Global Adjustment Charge (GAC) policy. As has been seen in the US, where demand charges comprise a high proportion of commercial electricity costs, shaving these peaks in demand using batteries can dramatically reduce bills.

Just two days ago, Energy-Storage.news reported that one such project, a 48MW/144MWh battery to be supplied by Fluence, could see a potential 357 customers save CA$3 million (US$2.29 million) to CA$5 million between them annually. That battery is being developed with an electric distribution company and will be connected to the local distribution network at eight separate feeder locations.

That project is in the works, while Convergent Energy + Power said on Wednesday that a 10MW/20MWh energy storage system, supplied by IHI Inc including hardware and software, has already gone into operation. It has been deployed at the site of an unnamed industrial customer in Sarnia, southwestern Ontario, which will be able to reduce its Global Adjustment Charge-related electricity costs.

While in the US the demand charge portion of a C&I bill is typically up to 50% of the total, the GAC can make up as much as 70% of an Ontario counterpart’s electricity costs, Convergent said. Since the developer’s entry into the Ontario market it claims to now be up to 26MW of such projects delivered. The company said its predictive platforms are 25% more accurate than publically available data and can save customers around 40% of a C&I bill total. Convergent claims the Sarnia system was completed and running during summer, where it ran without interruption during peaks in demand.

Chicago-based supplier IHI Energy Storage is a subsidiary of New York’s IHI Inc, in turn owned by Japan’s IHI Corporation. Among its offered products and services is ES/Forecaster, which predicts the occurrence of peaks in Ontario’s energy networks that could impact C&I users.

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